ABSTRACT
Decisions regarding the medical treatment of young children sometimes raise difficult legal issues. Given that young children lack the capacity to give valid consent, the lawfulness of their medical treatment will usually depend on the consent of the child’s parents. Treatment decisions on which the child’s treating physician and parents agree may sometimes give rise to concern for the child’s rights or welfare, for example, where there is an agreement to administer invasive high risk treatment. However, such cases will normally not come to the attention of the courts. Instead, the involvement of the courts will mainly be sought where medical practitioners and parents are in disagreement as to the right course of treatment for the child, or where the parents cannot agree on the treatment decision to be made. It is well established that in such cases the courts’ decisions will be based on an assessment of the best interests of the child, an approach which reflects the paramount importance accorded to the welfare of the child under s 1(1) of the Children Act 1989.
